neve-header | Wellcome Leap: Unconventional Projects. Funded at Scale.

Director

Ho Ching

Ms. Ho Ching is Chairman of Temasek Trust, a non-profit philanthropic trust.

Ho Ching recently retired as CEO & Executive Director of Temasek Holdings with effect from 1 October 2021. During her 17-year tenure as CEO, she oversaw its transformation into a global long-term investor.

Ho Ching began her 11-year engineering career with the Ministry of Defence in 1976, where she rose to become Director, Defence Materiel Organisation and concurrently Deputy Director, Defence Science Organisation.

In 1987, Ho Ching joined the Singapore Technologies group as its Director of Engineering, and became its President & CEO (1997 – 2001). She was the founding Chairman of Singapore Technologies Engineering, and joined Temasek as Executive Director in 2002.

Ho Ching is a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus of the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of the Academy of Engineering Singapore. She has served in various public service organisations, including as Chairman of the Singapore Institute of Standards and Industrial Research, and as Deputy Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and the National Productivity Board.

In the non-profit space, she is also Chairman of the Trailblazer Foundation, and advisor to the Autism Resource Centre. She is the patron of the Autism Association of Singapore, and the Assisi Hospice Singapore.

She holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) from the University of Singapore (now National University of Singapore), and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, USA.

Why does Wellcome Leap’s model of innovation matter?

One of the primary elements of the model’s past success is its emphasis on bringing basic scientists and engineers together to work on a single project with bold goals and tight timelines. This creates a cauldron of activity that is driven by the urgency and demands of a global problem. This kind of work falls into what’s known as Pasteur’s Quadrant.

Opportunities in Pasteur’s Quadrant are perishable in time. Either the problem shifts or the science does. So speed and agility are important. And because the goals are ambitious, we most often require diverse ideas and a vibrant mix of participants working from their home organizations. This is almost a unique characteristic of Pasteur’s Quadrant projects, which are almost always multi-discipline, multi-community, multi-stage and dynamically adapting throughout the program.

This also requires strong partnerships, humility, and respect. Because work in Pasteur’s Quadrant depends on a robust basic science discovery engine and organizations that scale innovations in the public and private sector.

This strategy is described in more detail in “Special Forces Innovation: How DARPA Attacks Problems”, Harvard Business Review, Dugan & Gabriel, 2013.

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Chair

Jay Flatley

Jay led Illumina as CEO from 1999 until 2016, as Executive Chairman through 2019 and now serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors. During his tenure as CEO, he took the company from $1.3 million in sales in 2000 to $2.2 billion in 2015, representing a compound annual growth rate of 64 percent. He oversaw the company’s expansion from microarrays into next-generation sequencing with the acquisition of Solexa in 2006, and from research into clinical and applied markets. Under his leadership, Illumina was named multiple times to the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 and Fast 500 lists, as well as to the Forbes 25 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies (2007, 2009 and 2010), the Fortune 100 Fastest-Growing Companies (2010 and 2011) lists, and recognition by MIT Technology Review as the World’s Smartest Company in 2014.

In addition to his work at Illumina, he serves on the Board of Directors at Coherent and Denali, is Lead Independent Director at Zymergen, Chairman of the Board at Iridia, and is on the Board of Trustees for The Salk Institute.

Jay received a B.A. in economics from Claremont McKenna College and a B.S. and M.S. (summa cum laude) in industrial engineering from Stanford University.

Director Emeritus

Mike Ferguson

Mike obtained a PhD in Biochemistry in London and was a post-doc at the Rockefeller University and Oxford University before moving to the University of Dundee. Mike was appointed the first Regius Professor of Life Sciences in 2013. At the University of Dundee, he helped establish the Drug Discovery Unit and the Proteomics Facility. Mike is known for his work on the structure and biosynthesis of parasite surface molecules and for solving the first structures of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) membrane anchors, which play important roles throughout eukaryotic biology. He believes in working across disciplines and in translational research. He has contributed to the growth of the Life Sciences sector in Dundee through the provision of research laboratories and technologies and, most recently, has co-led the Growing the Tay Cities BioMedical Cluster component of the Tay Cities Deal – designed to assist economic development.

Mike was a member (2012-2017) and then Deputy Chair (2018-2021) of the Wellcome Trust Board of Governors and a member of the Board of Directors of Wellcome Leap (2019-2022). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) (2012-present) and UK Biobank (2022-present).

Director Emeritus

Jeremy Farrar

Jeremy was the Director of the Wellcome Trust from 2013-2023 – a politically and financially independent global charitable foundation that exists to improve health by helping big ideas to thrive. He left Wellcome in February 2023 to take on a new role as Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization.

Jeremy is a clinician scientist who before joining Wellcome was, for eighteen years, Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, where his research interests were in infectious diseases and global health with a focus on emerging infections, he has published almost 600 articles. He was named 12th in the Fortune list of 50 World’s Greatest Leaders in 2015 and was awarded the Memorial Medal and Ho Chi Minh City Medal from the Government of Vietnam. In 2018 he was awarded the President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian of the Year Award and in 2019 was knighted for services to global health. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the European Molecular Biology organization, the US National Academies and the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.

CEO

Regina E. Dugan

Dr. Regina E. Dugan is an internationally recognized business executive, producer, engineer-artist, taskmaster, and product developer. Dr. Dugan has led world-class, global teams, and hundred-million to multi-billion dollar efforts to deliver novel products at Meta, Alphabet, and as the 19th Director, and first woman to lead, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The NYTimes noted that Dr. Dugan is “credited with having a knack for inspiring, and indeed insisting on, creative thinking,” and for her unwavering approach to innovation that advances research and solves practical problems. FORTUNE described her as one of the world’s leading experts on product innovation, “the kind that unhinges old ways of operating, juices competition and creates new growth.” She has been named to the Verge 50 list, Fast Company’s ‘Most Creative People in Business 1000′, CNN’s ‘Top 10 Thinkers’, and CNBC’s ‘NEXT LIST’. As executive producer, she has received 4 Annie Awards, 1 Emmy, and an OSCAR nomination.

Dr. Dugan earned her PhD from Caltech and was named a Distinguished Alumna in 2017, joining noted honorees such as Carver Mead and Gordon Moore. She earned her BS/MS from VaTech, where she is a member of the Academy of Engineering Excellence, and in 2022, received the University Distinguished Achievement Award.

Dr. Dugan is the co-author of Issues in Science and Technology article, ‘Changing the Business of Breakthroughs,’ and the co-author of Harvard Business Review cover article, ‘Special Forces Innovation,’ a 2013 HBR McKinsey Award finalist. She has spoken at events such as Code Conferences D9 and D11, Washington Post Summit on U.S. Competitiveness, PopTech, and TED. More recently, Dr. Dugan spoke at Philanthropy Asia Summit, Fortune Brainstorm Health, and Abundance 360 Summit.

Dr. Dugan previously served on the boards of Varian Medical Systems, Zynga, and Cruise; she is currently a director on the boards of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Siemens AG.

Talks and articles

New Force Behind Agency of Wonder, NYTimes

Google goes DARPA, FORTUNE

Special Forces Innovation, HBR

Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award